The deals and steals on Amazon’s biggest shopping day ever – expect Prime Day to take place on July 16 and 17
Amazon Prime Day 2018 will officially take place on July 16 and 17, with a million Prime Day deals going live in a 36 hour period between midday on Monday 16th and midnight on Tuesday 17th.
Amazon officially announced the news last week, confirming TechRadar’s date-confirming world exclusive from a few weeks ago where we uncovered the date through a hidden banner on Amazon’s site.
Prime Day will run in more countries than ever this year, with Australia now joining the party in time for the Oz launch of Prime delivery later this month.
If you’re just catching up, Prime Day is Amazon’s summertime version of Black Friday – available exclusively for subscribers to its Prime delivery and video streaming service. Traditionally it’s when thousands of products are sold at a discount, and in 2017 Prime Day was the biggest day of sales in Amazon’s history: busier than Black Friday, busier than Cyber Monday, and busier than any Prime Day before. It’s no wonder that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is currently the richest man in the world – he’s got all our money.
Amazon runs Prime Day primarily to drive up its Prime membership count because it knows it makes a substantial profit from every Prime member despite the fantastic value for money you get from it. For £7.99 per month you get unlimited access to its Netflix-a-like Prime Video streaming service, unlimited one-day delivery on Prime retail items, access to Prime Music, Prime Reading and Prime Photos plus loads and loads more. There’s no contract either – you can cancel whenever you like.
If you’re not a member yet, there’s a free 30-day trial available which is perfect as you could sign up for the trial today, make use of the 30 day trial period, get full access to all the Prime Day deals, stream some exclusive shows and movies, and then cancel in August before you actually pay anything.
Amazon Prime Day 2018 will start at 12pm (or 3pm ET) on Monday July 16 and run all the way until 11.59pm (2:59am ET) on Tuesday July 17 – that’s 36 hours of deals exclusively for Amazon Prime members.
It looks like this could be the biggest ever Prime Day event too with an Amazon statement claiming:
“Prime Day 2018 will feature 50 percent more Spotlight Deals and more than one million deals globally. Prime members will enjoy the biggest deals yet on Alexa-enabled products, including Echo, Fire TV, and Fire tablets this Prime Day — and starting today, members can save $100 on the Echo Show.
“Whole Foods Market joins the celebration this year with Prime Day deals and offers at all U. S. stores. New this year, members can shop Prime Day Launches – exclusive new items, content and special-edition products from hundreds of well-known and emerging brands.”
Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer added:
“Prime members will enjoy a day (and a half) of our best deals, with 36 hours to shop more than one million deals worldwide. New this year, members can shop exclusive Prime Day Launches from hundreds of brands worldwide, enjoy exclusive savings at Whole Foods Market and experience surprise entertainment events unboxed from giant Smile boxes in major cities. More than 100 million paid Prime members around the world will find our best Prime Day celebration yet.”
There are actually and we expect Amazon will continue to drip feed us a few tasty morsels between now and the 16th when the big feast begins. Take a look below for the latest Amazon Prime Day deals.
Amazon Prime Day 2018 will most certainly be leading with Amazon’s own devices, especially Echo smart speakers. We’re hoping for all-time low prices on the likes of the Echo Dot (£25 maybe?) and hopefully the Echo Spot (we’d love to see it drop to £80), which will be enjoying it’s first Prime Day. The cheaper Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and Fire Tablets are bound to be in the mix too. A knock-on effect of the Echo devices getting a discount should see Google attempt to match the prices with its Google Home smart speaker range as we mentioned in our other article, Why Amazon Prime Day will also be the best time to get a Google Home Mini. The upcoming Amazon Fire TV Cube has just been announced in the US for $119.99 (UK release TBC) and although it looks like a fantastic piece of kit, especially if you have Amazon Prime, it’s well worth hanging on for a discount if you want to avoid buyer’s remorse because you’ve paid too much, as we discuss in our feature, Why we’re waiting until Amazon Prime Day to buy the Fire TV Cube .
Console deals were in fine form last year, with the new Nintendo Switch getting some cracking deals, despite being almost impossible to get hold of elsewhere. So we’re expecting some more great deals- hopefully £250 with two or three top of the line games. Interest in the older PS4/Xbox One consoles is dying down a bit now as attention shifts towards the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Microsoft would be wise to use Prime Day as a chance to unleash some better bundles for the X, which is still significantly more expensive than the PS4 Pro, especially here in the US where you’ll rarely see a discounted Xbox One X bundle anywhere. That’s why we’ve also written about waiting for an Xbox One X Prime Day deal instead of any modest discounts available sooner.
Philips Hue bulbs have been a traditional favourite during the sales in recent years, although Black Friday was a bit of a letdown in all honesty. We’re keeping our fingers crossed Amazon Prime Day will turns things around so we can put even more colored lighting in our homes.
Cheap 4K TVs will be something to keep an eye out for on Prime Day as we saw some great deals last year. And with prices around the soccer World Cup at the moment already being pretty damn good over on our US cheap TV page (we’ve covered UK cheap TV deals too) the discounts will have to be extra special to stand out.
That’s just a small taste of what’s to come though. Thousands of different items will be getting huge discounts and we’ll be keenly digging through them all to bring you the best picks. We had a chat around the office to see what deals we’re looking forwards too, if you’d like to know, head on over to our full article; Team TechRadar’s Amazon Prime Day deals wishlist.
We’ll be pointing you towards the best Amazon Prime Day deals throughout the event here at TechRadar with our dedicated 20-strong team of deal hunters tracking down the best bargains.
We’re looking for deals all year round, not just Prime Day and Black Friday, so we’re pretty handy at spotting the genuine bargains over the fake discounts that aren’t worth your time. So feel free to bookmark us if you want to stay up to date with the finest deals.
To get the best Prime Day deals from Amazon you’ll have to be a member of Amazon Prime. Signing up doesn’t take long at all, but considering some of the deals can potentially sell out in minutes, it’s a step you really don’t want to be doing on the day.
Pro tip? If you’ve never signed up before, you can actually sign up for a free 30-day trial right now, which will last right through the sale in mid-July. You can enjoy all the membership benefits straight away too like fast delivery and the excellent Prime Video streaming service. We’ve actually written extensively about the benefits Amazon Prime offers. Here are some links to the free trial in the following countries: US, UK, Canada, India and Australia.
An odd site name for sure, but CamelCamelCamel.com is a fantastic resource for checking just how good a deal is. Simply copy/paste in the Amazon URL on the site of an item you’re thinking of buying and you’ll see an extensive price history for it on Amazon stretching back over a year. This way you can see if that day’s deal is really the best ever price, or how often it gets a similar discount and how likely it is you’ll see a similar price in a few months’ time.
With so much hype around Prime Day deals it’s easy to get swept away by the huge amount of deals and supposed big discounts. So yes, use CamelCamelCamel like we mentioned above, but even if it is the lowest price yet, that doesn’t mean it’s the right deal for you.
If you’ve set aside a budget and you know it’s important to not overspend, try and stick to your guns. Prime Day is not the final sale of the year, hell it’s not even the final sale of the summer, there will be plenty of other fantastic deals and it’s our job to find you the best ones all year round in our Deals section. So while that exact TV might not be available at that price again for a while, you can be sure some nigh-on identical ones will be before the kids go back to school.
The best Lightning Deals on Amazon Prime Day could be gone in matter of minutes, so be sure to check how many have been sold with the information provided on Amazon’s site. Deals of the Day will have an expiry date, but some will sell out long before they reach that time. Game consoles and 4K TVs are especially popular on Prime Day, so if you see a price you like on your lunch break, you’re risking it being gone by the time you get home from work.
While the Amazon app and mobile sites are pretty reliable most of the time, Prime Day last year saw quite a few buyers struggle to complete purchases with adding items to the basket being as issue.
We’re confident Amazon will be better equipped to deal the huge numbers of traffic this year, but all the same, we’d recommend browsing the deals on a laptop or PC if you can as the desktop version of the site might be a bit more stable.
In the UK many items will be eligible for free next day delivery or two business days in the US and Australia. Now as a Prime member, you’re paying for that delivery promise, well unless you’re on the free trial, then it’s free.
But if your delivery doesn’t turn up on the day it’s supposed to, then you need to put in a complaint to Amazon. This has happened to us a small number of times over the years and Amazon is keen to make it right. We’ve had an extra month added to our Prime membership for free as an apology and even had the whole cost of some cheap items refunded in full without having to return it. Naturally, if you’re not home when Amazon try to deliver on the original date that’s on you. You’ll find a nice orange slip informing you what to do next though.
While Amazon will be the main focus of course, last year we saw a wide range of rival retailers cash-in by having a sale of their own too. So it’s certainly worth checking to see if they’ve price-matched Amazon or have maybe gone even lower.
And unlike Amazon Prime Day deals, you won’t have to be a ‘member’ at other stores to get the deals. Or if you have a points-card elsewhere, it might be a good opportunity to bag a decent haul. We’ll be keeping an eye on other retailers for you to give you as many options as possible on the day.
Amazon Prime Day is the retailer’s big members-only summer sale and it’s been a massive success in the few short years it’s been going. If you want to get involved with the best discounts though, you’ll need to be a member of Amazon Prime. With free next-day delivery on thousands of items and the excellent Amazon Instant Video streaming service being just two of the membership’s key highlights, millions of you are already signed up.
